J/Link preview release
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg22277] J/Link preview release
- From: "Maryka Baraka" <marykab at wolfram.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:00:49 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
J/Link, a new Mathematica toolkit that integrates Mathematica and Java, is now available for download from the Wolfram Research, Inc. web site. The J/Link package contains a Java MathLink software developer's kit with extensive documentation, utilities, and sample programs. With J/Link, Java programs can now access the vast array of mathematical and technical knowledge that is available in Mathematica. J/Link also enables Mathematica programs to act as a scripting and wiring language for Java, providing an interactive development environment. Users can load Java classes, create objects, and call methods directly from Mathematica. According to Todd Gayley, Director of Java Technology at Wolfram Research, "J/Link is a major advance for Mathematica and Java. It expands the range and power of the Mathematica environment by instantly encompassing all of Java. It also makes it easy to write Java programs that use the services of Mathematica. In particular, people who want to create web-based solutions involving Mathematica now have an excellent tool." MathLink is a general interface for external programs to communicate with Mathematica. It allows Mathematica expressions to be transmitted--serialized--from one process to another, even if they are running on different computers. Because Mathematica, MathLink, and Java are all well-known platform-independent technologies, applications constructed from these components allow the construction of sophisticated and completely portable solutions involving computation done by single machines or groups of programs over a network. The core technology of J/Link makes use of the Java reflection API, which allows Java code to describe itself to some external agent, in this case Mathematica. In this way Mathematica can dynamically and automatically construct the correct interface to the capabilities of a Java package. There is no need for any special template interface to be constructed, as is the case for C or C++. Wolfram Research is making this preview release of J/Link available at no charge both to users and to developers who wish to create applications involving Java and Mathematica. For more information, visit http://www.wolfram.com/news/jlink.html. The J/Link preview release package can be downloaded from http://www.wolfram.com/solutions/mathlink/jlink. ======================= Maryka T. Baraka News Department Wolfram Research, Inc.